Psychological Therapies

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Psychological Therapies
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Psychotherapy

• An interaction between a trained therapist and
  someone suffering from psychological difficulties.

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Eclectic Approach

• The most popular form of therapy- it is basically
  a smorgasbord where the therapist combines
  techniques from different schools of psychology.

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Psychoanalysis

• Freud's therapy.

• Freud used free association, hypnosis and dream
  interpretation to gain insight into the clients
  unconscious.

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Psychoanalytic Methods

• Psychotherapists use their techniques to overcome
  resistance by the client.

• The psychoanalyst wants you to become aware of
  the resistance and together interpret (ex. Latent
  content) its underlying meaning.

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Transference

• In psychoanalysis, the patients transfer to the
  analyst of emotions linked with other
  relationships.

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Humanistic Therapy

• Focuses of peoples potential for
  self-fulfillment (self-actualization).

• Focus on the present and future (not the past).

• Focus on conscious thoughts (not unconscious
  ones).

• Take responsibility for you actions- instead of
  blaming childhood anxieties.

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Client (Person) Centered Therapy
Most widely used Humanistic technique is

• Developed by Carl Rogers

• Therapist should use genuineness, acceptance and
  empathy to show unconditional positive regard
  towards their clients.

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Active Listening

• Central to Rogers client-centered therapy

• Empathetic listening where the listener echoes,
  restates and clarifies.
• Can be verbal or nonverbal.
• The counselor interrupts only to confirm or
  accept the clients feelings or seek
  clarification.

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Behavior Therapies

• Therapy that applies learning principles to the
  elimination of unwanted behaviors.

• The behaviors are the problems- so we must change
  the behaviors.

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Classical Conditioning Techniques

• Counterconditioning
• A behavioral therapy that conditions new
  responses to stimuli that trigger unwanted
  behaviors.

Two Types exposure therapies and aversive
conditioning therapies.
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• Exposure therapies expose people to what they
  normally avoid.
• A type of counterconditioning that associates a
  pleasant relaxed state with gradually increasing
  anxiety-triggering stimuli is called systematic
  desensitization.
• Using progressive relaxation, the therapist
  trains you to relax one muscle group at a time
  until you achieve a drowsy state of complete
  relaxation.

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• Then the therapist asks you to imagine (with your
  eyes closed) a mildly anxiety-arousing situation.
  
• If imagining the scene causes you to feel any
  anxiety, you signal the therapist, possibly with
  a raised finger, and the therapist will instruct
  you to switch off of the scene and go back to
  relaxation.
• This is repeated until scene causes no anxiety.

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Virtual Technology Exposure Therapy
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• Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy allows you to
  wear a head-mounted display unit that projects a
  three-dimensional virtual world.
• This helps to recreate situations that are too
  expensive or difficult to re-create, such as fear
  of flying.

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Aversive Conditioning

• A type of counterconditioning that associates an
  unpleasant state with an unwanted behavior.

How would putting green slime on the fingernails
of a nail biter effect their behavior?
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Aversive Conditioning
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Aversive Conditioning

• What are some ways you can change the behaviors
  of your friends with aversive conditioning?

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Operant Conditioning

• Behavior Modification is used in this method
• Token Economy an operant conditioning procedure
  that rewards a desired behavior.

A person exchanges a token of some sort, earned
for exhibiting the desired behavior, for various
privileges or treats.
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Cognitive Therapy
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Cognitive Therapies

• A therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive
  ways of thinking and acting based on the
  assumptions that thoughts intervene between
  events and our emotional reactions. Our thinking
  colors our feelings, in other words.

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Cognitive Therapy

• Cognitive Therapists try to teach people new,
  more constructive ways of thinking.

Is .300 a good or bad batting average?
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Cognitive Therapy
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Aaron Beck and his view of Depression

• Noticed that depressed people were similar in the
  way they viewed the world.
• Used cognitive therapy get people to take off the
  dark sunglasses in which they view their
  surroundings

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Cognitive Therapy- Does It Work?
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• Depressed people normally do not exhibit the
  self-serving bias that is common in non-depressed
  people. They often attribute their failures to
  themselves and attribute their successes to
  external circumstances.
• Those who are trained to reform negative patterns
  of thinking and labeling can improve their
  depression.

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Group Therapies
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• Group therapy does not provide the same degree of
  therapist involvement with each client however,
  it saves therapists time and clients money. It
  is often no less effective than individual
  therapy.
• The social context allows people both to discover
  that others have problems similar to their own
  and to receive feedback as they try out new ways
  of behaving.

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• Family Therapy assumes that we live and grow in
  relation to others, especially our family. We
  struggle to differentiate ourselves within our
  family, but we also need to connect with them
  emotionally.
• A wide range of people participate in self-help
  and support groups. Most of these focus on
  stigmas or hard-to-discuss illnesses such as AIDS.

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• Clients may tend to overestimate the
  effectiveness of their psychotherapy for a
  variety of reasons which may include
• 1. People often enter therapy while in crisis.
• 2. Clients need to believe the therapy was worth
  the effort.
• 3. Clients generally speak kindly of their
  therapists.